LOS ANGELES – “Mad Men” star Jon Hamm calls playing Don Draper on the AMC drama his “best job” ever in the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair, and reflects on his worst: working on soft-core porn productions for Cinemax.

“I was actually at that time working as a set dresser for Cinemax soft-core-porn movies,” he says in the June issue hitting newsstands on Thursday. “It was soul-crushing.”

The struggle paid off, obviously. Hamm takes the lead on the big screen this summer in Disney’s sports drama, “Million Dollar Arm.”

Even with 52 acting credits under his belt, the one that shot him to stardom - and earned him his first Golden Globe, plus 11 Emmy nominations - is still his favourite.

“This is the best job I’ve ever had and maybe ever will have in my life - it’s so fun to play all of this,” Hamm says. “It can be relentlessly dark. It can be terribly sexually inappropriate, is a way to say it. But who else gets a chance to do any of that stuff? There’s so much there.”